According to a broadcast from the Australian newsmagazine Dateline the JDQ is nominally a charity, but was founded by the founder of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.[1] The broadcast stated that, following LeT being proscribed by the United Nations, its militant activity was moved to JDQ. Australian journalists who visited the JDQ's headquarters in 2009 wrote that the headquarters was built on a former LeT training camp.

^ abEvan Williams (2009). "The Terror Trail". Dateline. Retrieved 2010-06-12. Once this was a military training camp for the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba but now it is the headquarters of Jamaat-ud-Dawa. The base looked more like a military compound than a charity office.